Portrait of a Lady
by whereverwithyou
Summary: A short drabble on Caroline's thoughts as she prepares for her transformation.


A/N: This isn't the fanfiction I was expecting to come back with after such a long hiatus. I do have one story that I've been agonizing over perfecting all these years, (plus I actually have a life now, which is terribly complicated) but this went and popped in my head in the middle of working on it. This is just my personal ideas about what these characters might have been like and how their stories fit in with each other. I know not everything fits in perfectly with what we know from various backstories to the game, but since all of that is outside of Portal 2 anyway, I feel like the basic content presented in the game is always up for interpretation. Hope you enjoy!

Portrait of a Lady

It's still slightly ironic to me that they want me for my brain. Sure, nowadays I know as much about our operations as any of the bona fide scientists around here, but in the beginning, I had to fight to not be laughed out of the facility.

"Say goodbye, Caroline."  
"Goodbye, Caroline!"

I never heard the end of it. Especially since Cave's penchant for prerecording his greetings meant that new volunteers heard it for years. Sure, it was an embarrassing little gaffe, but I highly doubt anyone else could have met astronauts for the first time without their nerves causing them to say something stupid. Hardly the main criteria to judge me on.

At least Cave recognizes my value, I always had to remind myself whenever the boys' club got particularly derisive. And yet for all his efforts, all of the times he asked me to do something personally so he'd be sure it was done right, the end result even now is usually that someone cautions me not to break a nail in whatever I'm doing. But at least he's finally getting his wish of me running this place. Too bad neither of us will be alive to see it.

"I was right about you, Caroline," he'd always smile and say when I came up with a new plan for keeping the facility in order. But I know the gamble he took in hiring me back then must have been pretty large. The only reason I'd taken that elevator miles underground was because I had answered every secretarial posting in the classifieds. I had no knowledge of science whatsoever. Back then, the ridicule probably was warranted. But Cave said he admired my high enthusiasm. Not being offended when he told me my hair and skin samples had secretly been taken in the waiting room for use in a new experiment probably didn't hurt either.

"I think you'll fit right in here at Aperture, Miss Gladwin," he'd said. "Can you start immediately?"

"Yes Sir, Mr. Johnson!" I chirped, for the first of many several thousand times. I was grooming myself into being robotic long before Cave even thought it up.

One of the labcoats comes in and hands me a hospital gown.

"We're going to start the procedure soon."

He asked me if I want to review the file on the process and hands it to me. "Brain Mapping for Integration into Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System." I don't need to read it again. Hell, I practically coauthored the thing with how many times Cave tried to work it out with me. I just wish he'd told me it was going to be _my _procedure.

I take a deep breath to try to push back the growing feeling of nervousness. It's for science, I remind myself. The most important cause to devote one's being to. But this is where I differ from Cave. While he happily exposed himself in every way possible to those toxic moon rocks, seemingly in case one form of contact wasn't enough to drain away the remaining years of his life, I just can't be that resolute in my purpose when death is the probable outcome. Out of the two of us, I know I'm the lucky one – my brain will live on in a computer, and I don't have to endure months of lunar poisoning sickness before I die. But still, what scares me is that even if my thought processes are mapped into this system, I have no way of knowing if my consciousness is going to be, or if putting on this gown is one of the last things I'll be aware of doing.

Relax, I tell myself. They've already had great successes with the preliminary trial mappings – that annoying intern Wheatley, here on exchange with some inane plan to make a huge name for himself in US research, is still spitting out just as much nonsense as he ever did as a human. But just like his parents, I don't find it much of a consolation.

Well, I think as they lead me down the hall, it's not like I have much of a choice anyway. Cave was very clear in that.

"If I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place. Now she'll argue; she'll say she can't. She's modest like that. But you MAKE HER."

Disobeying him would be one thing, but I've done it before. The way he said it, however, means one thing and one thing only to everyone else around here – my refusal isn't an option.

And I suppose they have a right to force me. This AI program is the only thing getting us any sort of funding whatsoever. But they're not like Cave. They're not doing this for science or to save Aperture from going under. I know all they're after is their idea of revenge. They have nothing but hatred for Cave as the man behind all of their strange maladies and near-death experiences from mandatory employee testing. Compared to how many employees we lost outright in our experiments, if I were one of the ones with constant flatulence as my only side effect, I'd be as happy as a clam. Instead those perma-farters cheered along with everyone else when Cave died – said it was just desserts. And now they're getting rid of me, the last of the old guard. I wonder how seriously any of them are even taking Cave's wish that my computer is going to control everything here. I, for one, plan on taking it _very_ seriously.

After they've shaved my head, they lay me down on a table for the procedure. It's metal, and the cold sensation, so rare and foreign in a facility of controlled atmosphere, suddenly conjures for me images of playing in the snow as a child. I scoff at myself for how predictable I'm being. Life flashing before my eyes? Really? I should at least be able to avoid getting that irrationally emotional in the face of this. And besides, I haven't seen my parents in thirty years. My work down here separated me from every part of normal life, for the sake of science – or in more investigative times, secrecy. They probably think I've been dead all these years, and they'll only be wrong for a little longer.

The first step is the initial scans so the team knows what they're working with.

"Miss Gladwin, you'll have to remain calm," someone says. "Stress and agitation in your brain activity will only make the procedure more difficult."

I'd like to see you do better up here, I think of sniping. But what's the point in giving them something else to hate me for? Instead I nod, and hum a little tune to try and relax, probably an old aria or something my mother used to favor. She loved her opera records. But I still can't help it – I'm scared. If only my true love was science like Cave's was, I bemoan in frustration. Instead mine had to be him.

"Sorry boys, she's married." It was Cave's familiar way of helping me out of any unwanted advances from the lab boys and volunteers around here. The problem was, after a pause he'd always add, "to Science!"

And I suppose he was right. We all were back then, in the time when humanity still strove for achievement in areas other than competitive eating contests. I always admired Cave as one of the greatest minds who ever lived, but for a long time I was only focused on learning how Aperture operated. We were all absorbed in the importance of our work and the thrill of building a better future. And then suddenly the future abandoned us, deciding that getting the astronauts out of the alternate universe they'd been zapped into wasn't their problem to fund. If Black Mesa had lost the crews of three planned Apollo missions, I bet they'd have gotten three more sent in to try and get them back. It was only when those troubled years came, when Cave sat dejectedly at trying to figure out how the patent thieves at that company continued to pull the wool over us, that I finally became something more to him.

He never denied loving me. And he always said outright that he needed me. Yet still, the saying continued. "Married to science." I began to wonder if he was referring to me or to himself.

Perhaps all this procedure is is some strange manifestation of Cave's love. If we'd actually been husband and wife, I would've inherited the facility without a problem. Maybe he wants to ensure that the secrecy surrounding us won't keep me from getting control of things. If having my brain ripped out and put inside a computer is the way of achieving that, however, I'd much rather he have bucked up and given me a ring. But, of course, converting my personality and intelligence into a computer system won't interfere with science in the way that a ring would have. Or in the way that a baby would have.

I'd known, of course, that he wouldn't be enthusiastic about the pregnancy. But I'd clung to the faint hope that when I told him, he'd be happy again, with something in his future to look forward to even as Aperture continued to circle the drain. Instead it was a sign of everything wrong with the company, a lapse in judgment that had distracted fatally and was probably the reason we were now to the point of paying hobos sixty dollars to do our tests. There were still occasions where I could be nonchalant and call him Cave, but it was rare that doing so wouldn't have me met with a disparaging look reminding me to be professional. Yes Sir, Mr. Johnson. Anything for science.

Parenthood would have been even more of a distraction; that I knew he was right on. Plus, we knew we'd have to start testing with our employees soon, and we didn't want to be emotionally compromised in our work. Cave always said that the downside about testing with astronauts was precisely that perfect life of theirs. They'd get out onto the test floor, see something harmless like a rouge mutant clone of themselves or an industrial-grade incinerator, and think about that wife, car and 2.5 children at home. Hardly a day went by when someone didn't try to back out of a test, or, in that one case, try to assault Cave for our experiments resulting in him actually having .5 child. The scientific breakthrough of the boy's extreme resistance to disease, of course, was overlooked in favor of parental emotion. Cave knew he couldn't have that happen to us, or we'd surely lose our symbolic child in favor of our real one.

So, in classic Cave fashion, he merged the two. I guess I can thank the same science that's about to dissect my brain for giving me any sort of relationship at all with my daughter. I got a few months with her in the experiment on whether breastmilk gave more nutritional benefits than a formula based mainly of psychedelics and Freon.

Just as Chell got to be the Control baby in that test, Cave made sure the rest of her childhood was as far removed from the dangers of testing as possible. She was always going to be used for testing, of course – a quality test subject when you're mostly working with homeless people is nothing to sneeze at – but we're going to go one step further, molding her into the _perfect_ test subject. So every day she sits in her sphere, receiving the best nutrition, education and exercise she can, eating up along with everyone else the story that she was abandoned at Aperture's doorstep, making her practically Science's child. Just as she never knew that there was anything different about the employee with long black hair who came infrequently to direct her on various things, she probably doesn't know now that the apparatus holding the wires and lasers is descending closer to her mother's head.

_Oh, my baby! _

Rational thought is gone now – death is too close. Was losing Cave not enough? Having to comfort and nurse him and finally when there was nothing left to do, put my arms around him until he died? Now I have to lose her too?

Suddenly I wonder if being a computer can actually make me more of a mother to her than I've been as a human. I won't ever have to take my eyes off her. And I can watch over her without the constraints of mortality. I had her late; even without this circumstance I'd be fretting that I'm now nearly sixty while she's barely a teenager. It's a small bit of comfort as they prepare to turn on the machine.

"Cave Johnson here," comes over the loudspeaker. They still play these to every test subject for a morality boost. "I'd just like to thank you on behalf of Aperture for your contribution to science. Remember, the future is on _your_ shoulders. So, if you're thinking of puking on the test floor out of fear or turning and running away, just remember, the future will be looking down at you, and in that case, it is not gonna like what it sees. More importantly, _I'll_ be looking at you, with a camera, and you will be fired. I know you'll do the right thing."

Somehow hearing these messages now isn't the same as being there after he turned off the microphone, saying something like "Maybe that'll get them to stop whining for a while" as he loosened his tie and poured out two glasses of brandy. Even Cave Johnson had days when he perhaps wasn't feeling so professional.

I know when the lasers have turned on from their whirr before their heat, but not for long. Oh God, the pain! I know they're inside my head now and I cry out, still mainly from fear instead of my physical torture. I DON'T WANT TO GO! It gets more intense, I lose the feeling in my legs but not in my brain, no, I can feel everything they do there. I cry out again but my speech is gone and I can't take what they're doing to me, I can't, it's terrible, I don't want it, and then suddenly as I realize I've lost all feeling, he's there.

I see him again, as if nothing at all has happened, as if there was never any doubt in either of our minds of what I mean to him. The calm I feel tells me instantly that none of that matters anymore, that everything will be okay, even better, than it was before. I forget the whirr of the machine, forget even that I'm there being taken apart on the table. I think only of him and of Chell, but I'm not worried about her. She's as smart as her father; I know she'll be alright. He smiles as his eyes meet mine, and I see his hand stretch out towards me.

"Come with me, Caroline."

Yes Sir, Mr. Johnson.


End file.
